![]() ![]() The team’s innovation could improve how forecasters detect and track solar eruptions, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), that pose space weather hazards to Earth. Farther away from the sun, more gradual outflows were observed of the kind that can influence space weather. Courtesy of Dan Seaton, NCEI and CIRES.įor example, the researchers tracked material moving back and forth between regions, seeing some inflows from outside the inner corona that triggered eruptions. This movie shows plasma in the sun’s middle corona at two different temperatures (gold: 800,000☌, blue: 1.5 million☌), revealing the complex dynamics, outflows, and inflows that connect this region to the sun itself and to the outer corona and heliosphere. “We didn’t think there was such a deep connection between these regions, but now we know they’re interacting all the time,” Seaton said. The new observations revealed surprising connections between the inner corona, with its complex magnetic structure, and the outer corona, where the solar wind flows into the heliosphere, the vast bubble of space surrounding the sun. “It connects to the stuff that connects to us: the middle corona is where that happens, and we haven’t observed it before,” Seaton says. The middle corona is the place on the sun that drives the solar wind and big solar eruptions that travel to Earth and can affect various technologies here, including blocking radio communications, damaging power grids, and diminishing navigation system accuracy. With the innovative technique, the researchers were able to take images of a region of the corona that is important and difficult to see. “ It didn’t take building a new instrument, but using the instrument in a new way.” “We tiled the images together,” Seaton says. In August and September of 2018, the researchers captured the middle corona by using SUVI to take pictures from one side of the sun, pointing directly at the sun, and then from the other side. These observations reveal the structure, temperature, and nature of EUV emissions from this region. CIRES researchers at NCEI led an experimental study using the GOES Solar Ultraviolet Imager, which provided the first-ever movies of the sun’s elusive middle corona in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |